Review: Chain Letter by Christopher Pike

Release Date/Publisher: Published July 23rd 2013 by Simon Pulse (First Published May 1st 1986 by Avon)

Own: Trade Paperback (252 pages)

Finished: February 12th 2014

Series:

Chain Letter

The Ancient Evil

Synopsis from GoodReads:

When Alison first read the chain letter signed “Your Caretaker,” she thought it was some terrible sick joke. Someone, somewhere knew about that awful night when she and six other friends committed an unthinkable crime in the desolate California desert. And now that person was determined to make them pay for it. One by one, the chain letter was coming to each of them … demanding dangerous, impossible deeds… threatening violence if the demands were not met. No one out of the seven wanted to believe that this nightmare was really happening to them. Until the accidents started happening — and the dying…

A Little Something About Me and My Thoughts…

I own the 2 in 1 version of this book (Chain Letter and The Ancient Evil) but I decided to write the reviews individually. I own only a small portion of the 50+ Christopher Pike books out now but I’m hoping to expand my collection because I enjoyed reading all of them. The first book/series I ever read by him was Thirst, which I immediately went out and bought the rest of the series but I haven’t had a chance to get through it fully yet. This was the newest book of his that I picked up and honestly, it wasn’t my favourite because I just wasn’t able to get into it as much as his other books. The main reasons are; there was such a large group of people to focus on (7 to be exact) and I felt like there was a lack of details about them (I’m assuming because there was just too many characters) to make me really relate and connect with them.

Review:

The story is all over the between the 7 people place in the beginning which is a little hard to follow. Luckily, it quickly gets into a groove and it focuses more on Alison; the nice girl who has this obsessive crush on Tony; the typical all-star athlete used to having girls throw themselves at him. They start dating and semi try to maintain a relationship while all hell breaks loose after one of their friends/group receives a chain letter. One of the other main characters I really liked was Neil; he’s a sweet person who despite suffering from a lot of health issues stays strong through their ordeal and tries to support everyone. The most memorable part of the others were mainly negative things about their personalities like one being weak and whiny, another is a selfish smart-ass, one’s a show off and the other is a hurtful bitch.

What I liked a lot about this story was that it wasn’t your typical blackmailing teenage drama which I assumed it would be. They would get their task in the newspaper written in code and there would be consequences that happened if they didn’t do what the “caretaker” wanted. I found it fun to read who was next and what they had to do because it was pretty interesting. Some tasks were really twisted, while some were more humiliating then anything.

Basically everything was happening at school and everyone else seemed oblivious to it. I liked that the things that were happening weren’t over the top and exaggerated. The consequences, choices and dilemmas they were facing seemed appropriate for their age and whatever they were dealing with.

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About The Dark Reading Room

I LOVE reading and I have hundreds of awesome books on my bookshelf. I started blogging so I could connect with like-minded people and share my thoughts on what I read with others.
I’m pretty open minded when it comes to reading, I enjoy reading anything like; true crime, biographies and so on but my favourite genre is YA paranormal books.
Non-book related things: I’m a metalhead, I love going to concerts, some of my favourite TV shows are Supernatural, True Blood, Walking Dead, Vampire Diaries, Firefly...
I’m a hardcore gamer and play games like COD, Halo, Gears of War, Borderlands, Final Fantasy, The Last of Us, Dead Rising and much more!

I’ve never read anything by this author, but I kind of want to now based on the description alone. Sometimes having a lot of characters can be confusing for sure, but if I do read this hopefully I can them all in order and still enjoy it. Do you think I would like it?
Can’t wait to see what you think of the second book!

You definitely should read some of his stuff! His books are really good and even this one despite not being one of his best, was still good. I think you’d like it so you can borrow it sometime if you want 🙂